TORONTO – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper triggered an election campaign Sunday and set the vote for Oct. 19, when Harper and his Conservative party hope to earn a fourth term after almost a decade in power.
Analysts say the election is a toss-up and Harper faces an uphill battle to form another majority government. If Harpe

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Now there are two: Zimbabwe accused a Pennsylvania doctor on Sunday of illegally killing a lion in April, adding to the outcry over a Minnesota dentist the African government wants to extradite for killing a well-known lion named Cecil in early July.
Zimbabwe’s National Parks and Wildlife Management Authori

JERUSALEM – Israel’s security cabinet approved new measures Sunday against Israelis who attack Palestinians, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government will have “zero tolerance” for Jewish extremists.
The tough talk follows a pair of attacks last week that shocked Israelis. On Friday, suspected Jew

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Malaysian officials said Sunday that they would seek help from territories near the island where a suspected piece of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was discovered to try to find more plane debris.
A new piece of debris, meanwhile, found on Sunday on the French island of Reunion in the western Indian Oce

NEW DELHI – Heavy monsoon rains have killed more than 100 people in India in the past week and forced tens of thousands of people to take shelter in state-run relief camps, India’s Home Ministry said Sunday.
A cyclone struck the worst-hit state of West Bengal, where 48 people have been killed and nearly 215,000 villagers have

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Wildlife authorities in Zimbabwe on Sunday dismissed a report of the shooting death of a male lion who was a companion of Cecil, a well-known lion killed by an American hunter in early July.
The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority released a photograph of the lion named Jericho that it said

Italian police found more than $400,000 in cash on Snoop Dogg as he prepared to board a private plane heading to Great Britian. Customs officials found $422,000 in cash in his Louis Vuitton luggage at the Lamezia Terme airport in Calabria on Saturday, according to reports from Reuters. The rapper had performed there Friday. The amount is

BALMA, France – A wing flap suspected to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Saturday arrived at a French military testing facility where it will be analyzed by experts.
A truck brought the roughly 8-foot (2.44-meter) component known as a flaperon to the DGA TA aeronautical testing site near Toulouse, accompanied by

BALLO KE, India – In this sleepy Punjabi village, no one was surprised to see a 7-foot-tall Sikh farmer striding the narrow lanes toward the local Sikh temple on June 25. The farmer, Balbir Singh Bamrah, is a familiar presence in Ballo Ke, and something of a local curiosity.
But the other worshippers at the temple, known as a Gurud

The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force reported Saturday that the brother of Cecil, the lion hunted and killed in Zimbabwe by a wealthy American dentist, was also illegally shot and killed, but researchers tracking the animal said he was alive. The task force announced the death of the lion Jericho on Facebook. Johnny Rodrigues, a senior pa

TOKYO – Since the collapse last year of Mt. Gox, the exchange that served as the largest hub for storing and trading the virtual currency Bitcoin, law enforcement officials and angry clients have been asking what happened to nearly half a billion dollars in Bitcoins that the company said had vanished from its computer systems. On Sa

CAIRO – Secretary of State John Kerry is in Cairo for security talks with Egyptian officials before heading to Qatar to try to ease Arab concerns about the Iran nuclear deal.
Kerry arrived in the Egyptian capital on Saturday and on Sunday will resume a U.S.-Egypt strategic dialogue that was suspended in 2009 due to political unrest

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwean wildlife authorities say they have suspended the hunting of lions, leopards and elephants in an area favored by hunters following the killing of a lion popular with tourists. The National Parks and Wildlife Authority said Saturday that bow and arrow hunts have also been suspended unless they are approv

PARIS – The question of what should be done about prostitution is as old as the profession itself, but the issue is now front and center again, as a leading human rights group proposes decriminalization, while some countries push toward harsher penalties for those who pay for sex.
In England, France and Ireland, lawmakers are consi

LONDON – Three relatives of the late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden were killed when a private plane crashed in Britain, police and the Saudi embassy said Saturday. British police said three passengers and a pilot were killed Friday when an Embraer Phenom 300 jet crash-landed in a car auction site as it approached the runway at Bla